


Say it in flower

by smkkbert



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, flowershop au, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 12:17:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7222030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smkkbert/pseuds/smkkbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say it in flower

How come most people only saw an easy solution for a lot of situations when they saw flowers and hence completely missed out the potential these beauties could actually have?

_Just give me the cheapest of the bouquets. It’s not like there is much of a difference._

Oliver could only shake his head about his last customer’s words. He just really didn’t appreciate attending people like that in his store. They didn’t care for what they bought; they were just trying to get over with it as soon as possible. Like really what people thought that way?

Obviously people who thought it didn’t matter what flowers they brought as long as they fit to the occasion. They bought little bouquets as a little thank you or to give to their partner’s parents when meeting them for the first time. They bought lilies for funerals and daisies for sick bed visits. They bought a single red rose for their first date and several ones for the proposal or to apologize for cheating. They just didn’t put any thought or effort into picking flowers.

That was not what he had hoped for when he had made his dream of opening his own flower shop come true. He had hoped for the opportunity to do something more meaningful. He had wanted to do something challenging like putting together a bouquet that kind of described the person who should get it with flowers or something similarly interesting. The truth was that the fewest customers were like that, though. The most of them said they wanted something special, but actually they just wanted to buy the flowers and go back home as soon as possible.

Sighing, he looked up from the bouquet he had just put together and looked out of the window to the people walking outside on the sidewalk. There was an old woman, taking her dachshund for a walk. She made him think of orange gerbera. A man in an expensive-looking suit reminded him of a mountain strelitzia and a short, blonde with glasses and a vigorous tread… She was harder to put in only one flower and before he could have decided what bouquet would work to describe, she had already disappeared from his view.

Sometimes when he was bored, he did this. He tried to describe people in flowers or bouquets. He liked doing that because flowers were just as diverse as people were. He just really didn’t get why people couldn’t see flowers like that or why-

His thoughts came to a sudden stop when the blonde girl he hadn’t been able describe with the fitting flowers yet, suddenly came back from the direction she had headed off to before. Oliver watched her, feeling his breath get caught in his throat when she didn’t just head off into the direction she had come from before and instead tore open the door to his shop and stormed right towards him.

“These are twenty bucks,” she said, slapping her flat hand on the countertop with the banknote under the palm of her hand. “How do I passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower?”

Oliver bit his tongue, keeping himself from chuckling. The short blonde was cute in a lot of ways. If the tone of her voice or the way she was looking at him right now were any indication, though, she definitely wouldn’t appreciate hearing that. She seemed pissed – like really, really pissed.

“How about a cactus?”

“What’s passive-aggressive about a cactus?” she asked, perking up her eyebrow slightly. Sighing, she pulled her hand with the money back from the countertop, moving to turn around. “You might not be the right person to-“

“You want to passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower? I am the right person for you,” Oliver interrupted her hastily.

“I am not sure about that,” the blonde said, eying him up with a doubting expression in her eyes. “I mean a cactus is not creative at all, and I need this to be good.”

“You won’t regret coming in here,” Oliver promised. “I hope you brought some of your time.”

“Oh, I have all the time in the world,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “As long as at the end of that time I will have the perfect flowers to send to my boyfriend-just-turned-ex-boyfriend, I am fine.”

Grinning, Oliver rubbed his hands. He had been asking for a challenge. Now here it was, and actually it was even better than anything he could have asked for. Passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower.

Oliver took a look around, puckering his lips. “So you said it’s for your ex-boyfriend?”

“Yupp.”

“In that case I’d say we start with a few roses.”

“You didn’t miss the ‘ex’ before the ‘boyfriend’, did you?”

Oliver chuckled, already heading off towards the corner of the room where roses in every possible color were placed. “You have no trust, do you?”

“In men? No absolutely not,” she confirmed, following him slowly with her arms still crossed in front of her chest. “Why would I? Either they leave or they cheat or they are suggesting a cactus as a passive-aggressive flower – men are just useless.”

“That’s… nice,” Oliver said after awhile, unsure of what else to say to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I am sure you did not sign up for listening to your customers’ freaking out like me.”

“Hey, you’re the most interesting customer to come here ever.”

“I guess when you say ‘interesting’ you mean crazy?”

“Absolutely not,” he assured with a firm shake of his head. “I just don’t get to do fun stuff like this often… or ever to be honest.”

“In that case I hope you will put your whole heart into this,” she replied. “I would mean a lot to me.”

“My whole heart is in this bouquet. I promise.”

Oliver glanced back at her over his shoulder. He winked at her and couldn’t hold back his smile when she rolled her eyes in response. The way she bit down on her bottom lip right after, though, trying to hide the smile that seemed to be forming on her lips, made it even harder to keep his own smile back.

He looked at the five roses in his hand before he turned back around to the blonde.

“So… tell me about your ex-boyfriend,” he suggested and when she was about to deny, he hastily added, “The more I know about him or your relationship, the better will the flowers be.”

The blonde looked at him. She seemed to be hesitant about telling him, and Oliver actually got that. She had no idea who he was. They didn’t know each other. Of course she didn’t want to tell him about herself or the relationship that had just ended.

So Oliver held out a hand for her and said, “Hi, I’m Oliver Queen. I bought this flower shop three years ago, much to my parents’ disappointment. My first and by the way so far only girlfriend and I have been together for eight years. I broke up with her when she started pushing about moving in together and starting a future with marriage and kids. She had the right to want that because we’ve been together for a long time already, and we weren’t in high school anymore. We were adults. I just wasn’t ready for that. She will marry my best friend in a few months.”

The blonde looked at him with slightly perked up eyebrows for awhile, not saying a word. Slowly her gaze drifted down to the hand he still held out for her. Biting down on her bottom lip once more, she loosened her arms from the way they were crossed in front of her chest and put her tiny hand into his paw.

“Felicity,” she said. “Smoak.”

Flowers describing Felicity should definitely include sunflowers.

“So, Felicity,” Oliver said with a smile. “What do you want to tell me about your ex-boyfriend?”

In the next thirty minutes Felicity told him a lot about her ex-boyfriend, and indeed it helped Oliver to put together a nice bouquet.

She and Cooper fell in love in college. They met in a class for computer security and had been crazy about each other from the very first minute they had seen each other. So Oliver added some tulips to the roses.

They had been together for years, and they had been very happy. Felicity had actually thought he might be the one for her because although he had only been her first love, it had seemed so honest and pure. And it had just lasted so long. Oliver put some chrysanthemums to the bouquet. They symbolized reliability.

Yesterday she had found out that Cooper had stolen one of her IT projects, and when she had wanted to confront him about it, she had caught him in bed with a different girl of their class. Oliver added some white carnations to the bouquet.

He looked at the flowers for a moment longer before holding them out for Felicity. She looked at the bouquet without taking it. Looking up at him, she cocked her head.

“If I had wanted a bouquet to sum up all the hopes I had in Cooper and me, the bouquet would be perfect, but I broke up with him.”

Oliver chuckled, holding the flowers out closer to her, and hesitatingly she took them from him. She eyed them up carefully, not seeming too content with the result of his work. Luckily, Oliver wasn’t done yet because he really didn’t want to disappoint the one customer who actually took a lot of time to pick the right flowers.

“Felicity, bash the flowers against the countertop.”

“What?” she asked him, her eyes widening.

Oliver smiled. “You heard me. Bash the flowers against the countertop.”

“But-“

“No buts,” he said, putting his hands to her shoulders and pushing her towards the counter. “Just do it. You can let out all your frustration on them.”

Felicity kept looking at him without moving for only a short moment longer. Then she hauled off and beat the flowers against the edge of the table forcefully. Petals fell from the flowers and covered the floor.

Oliver watched Felicity closely. She lifted the maltreated flowers to look at them.

“This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” she said. “I actually thought my Goth-self would enjoy this far more than my new self.”

“Goth?” Oliver asked, looking Felicity up and down. If there was anything he had never thought would be possible than this sweet blonde in front of him having been a Goth in her past.

“Yes,” Felicity replied, shrugging her shoulders. “After yesterday I decided it was time for a new beginning, though.”

Oliver perked up his eyebrows. “You stopped being a Goth yesterday?”

Felicity shrugged her shoulders. “Some girls cut their hair, I became a completely new person. And I already feel it might be a happier one. I might be a person who maltreats flowers regularly. It feels good.”

“So do it again,” Oliver suggested.

Without hesitation Felicity did it again and again. She seemed to really be enjoying this. Her smile widened more with each time she hit the flowers down against the edge of the counter. When she seemed to have gotten rid of the worst of her frustration, she took in a deep breath. Turning around to him, she held out the flowers. Or at least what was left of them. Smiling, he took them from her.

“So we’re done?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Oliver answered.

He winked at her before nodding his head towards one of the corners of his shop. She followed him there, and he could feel her nosy gaze on him when he put the destroyed bouquet on one of the tables and put on some gloves. He then added prickly thistles around the bouquet.

“So…” Oliver said, turning around and showing her the finished work. “What do you say?”

“I love it,” Felicity replied, and put her hands to her heart with a melodramatic expression on her face. “And it really comes from the heart.”

Oliver chuckled. “Do you want to hand it to your ex-boyfriend personally, or should I send it to him?”

“I would love to see his face when he gets this,” Felicity said, “but I really don’t want to give it to him. So I actually think you should send it to him.”

Oliver wrapped up the flowers, wrote down the address Felicity told him and looked at Felicity with a smile.

“We’re done.”

“Great,” Felicity said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing at all.”

“No way!” Felicity replied, shaking her head. “I am buying flowers, created a mess here in your shop and poured out my heart to you.”

“Because I asked you to.”

“Yes, but-“

“Okay,” Oliver interrupted her hastily because he got the feeling that if he actually discussed this with her, he’d lose, “you owe me twenty bucks.”

“I owe you more than twenty bucks.”

“You wanted to passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower. Did we manage to do that?”

“Yes.”

“You said you had twenty bucks, so twenty bucks is what I am willing to take from you.”

“Fine,” Felicity said with a groan, “but please acknowledge that I was willing to pay more.”

“I will,” Oliver said with a nod.

They looked at each other for a long moment, but neither of them said a word. Oliver didn’t want this fun experience with her to end so soon. He hadn’t had that much fun in awhile now, especially not during work.

Before he could find anything to say, though, Felicity gestured with her thumb back over her shoulder and stated, “I gotta go now.”

“Yes, sure,” Oliver replied. He tried to not let his disappointment show, but he wasn’t sure if his smile didn’t seem too forced. “We’re done here anyway, so… bye.”

“Bye. And thanks for all the effort you put into the bouquet.”

“You’re welcome. It was actually my pleasure.”

Felicity smiled at him once more before turning around and leaving. Oliver watched her until she disappeared from his view. Smiling to himself, he stared into the empty space for a short while, mentally going through what had happened in the last thirty minutes since this interesting, young blonde had stepped into the room. And before he knew it, he started to put together a new bouquet to find out who Felicity Smoak was described in flower.

 

 

When Felicity stepped into the flower shop, it was empty. Frowning, she took a few more steps further into the room, looking for its owners, and only when she didn’t find him anywhere she called out his name.

“Oliver?!”

“Felicity, hi,” he said in surprise, stepping out of a room behind the counter. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to warn you,” she said. “After you refused to take my money, I thought the least I could do was advertise you. So in case you will have a dozen of customers with crazy wishes each week, that’s all on me.”

Oliver smiled. “That’s great. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And that’s actually all I wanted to tell you and I-“

“No, wait!” Oliver hurried to say. “I got something for you.”

Felicity watched Oliver disappear into the backroom he had come from before, and she bit down on her bottom lip. Yesterday she had thought that maybe he wanted to say something more, but when he hadn’t said anything and she had felt like the moment had become awkward, she had left. Ever since she had tried to find a reason to come here once more, though. There was just something about Oliver.

When he came back, he held a beautiful bouquet in his hands. It was made of sunflowers and other flowers she couldn’t name. Sunflowers and roses were like the only flowers she would recognize. She envied people who could walk through a park and name each and every plant.

“This is for you,” he said, holding out the bouquet for her.

“For me?” she repeated questioningly, not missing how high-pitched her voice sounded.

“Yes,” Oliver replied, and the way he smiled at her almost took her breath away. “I was thinking about you, and this was the result of it. I thought the lotus here in the middle fitted so well because of your new beginning.”

“You-?” Felicity started, but stopped herself before she could say anything embarrassing.

“I thought maybe we could… I don’t know… grab some dinner together,” he suggested. “Platonically of course since you just ended a relationship, and I am sure you need time to process that and everything, but…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, instead letting it end in a vague gesture of his hand. Felicity felt her heart beating up to her throat. She actually had to clear her throat before she was able to answer.

“Yes, that would be nice.”

“Maybe today at eight?”

“Yes, that… that would be nice,” Felicity said again, not missing how lame she sounded. It was just that her heart was still beating crazily fast and strong against her ribs, making it hard to say anything at all.

After a short moment of silence, she suggested giving him her phone number, and eventually wrote it down on a piece of paper. She then took the flowers he had put together for her and smiled.

“Shall I pick you up?” Oliver asked.

“Uhm… yes, why not? I’ll text you my address later. I gotta go I only came here during my short lunch break.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll see

Nodding, Felicity walked to the door. She had the door handle already in her hand when she turned back around to him. Oliver was still looking at her with a gaze that made a warm shiver run down the length of her spine and building goosbumps.

“Oliver?”

“Hm?”

“Maybe dinner won’t be all platonic.”

Oliver smiled. “Glad to hear that.”

Felicity answered his smile with one of her own for a few seconds more. Only when she felt herself blushing at the way he looked at her so intensely, she hastily turned back towards the door and left.

Looking down at her floors, she couldn’t stop smiling. If those flowers were what he saw when he looked at her, he had to think that she was really, really beautiful.


End file.
